For the past ten years, artist Marizio Savini has been making sculptures from thousands of pieces of chewed bubble gum, and sells his creations for as much as £40,000 each.

His sculptures include a life-size buffalo, a grizzly bear and businessmen doing gymnastics.

Why chewing gum?

"...because it seemed to me an amazingly versatile material compared to those used by the traditional arts such as painting...

"I believe that in my work ... this material is redeemed and acquires a capacity and it has an expressive dignity of its own. I work the chewing gum when it is warm and manipulate it with a knife just like some traditional material like clay.

The most important step is the fixing of the sculptures with formaldehyde and antibiotic."